Removal of contaminants from fine grained soils using electrokinetic (EK) flushing. Final report, September 30, 1987--June 30, 1993
Recently, attention has focused on developing cost effective techniques to remove inorganic contaminants from soils in-situ. For most in-situ techniques hydraulic pressure is used to disperse the chemical additives and collect the contaminated groundwater. In-situ treatment technologies have had success at sites containing sandy soils but have not shown much promise for soils with large amounts of clay and silt. This is due primarily to difficulty in transporting groundwater, contaminants, and chemical additives through the subsurface. Unfortunately, soils high in clay and silt are known to sequester large quantities of inorganic and organic contaminants. Thus, soils having low hydraulic conductivity`s are generally efficient in sequestering pollutants but are resistant to standard in-situ remediation techniques because of the difficulty in transporting groundwater and contaminants. A candidate technology for the in-situ remediation of low permeability soils is electrokinetic (EK) soil flushing. In EK soil flushing, groundwater and contaminants are transported under an a plied voltage. The transport of groundwater electroosmotically does not depend directly on the soil`s hydraulic conductivity. Thus, soils that would otherwise require excavation and treatment can be remediated in-situ if electrokinetics is used as the driving force for liquid and contaminant transport. This report details the results from work conducted on the use of EK soil flushing to remediate a fine grained soil contaminated with lead. The first portion of the experimental work entailed soil collection and characterization, soil adsorption and desorption of lead, and EK reactor construction and testing. The second phase of the research consisted of investigating the efficacy of using EK soil flushing on an actual soil using bench-scale EK reactors. For the second phase of the research the affect of initial conditions on the efficiency of EK soil flushing was studied.
- Research Organization:
- National Research Center for Coal and Energy, Morgantown, WV (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC21-87MC24207
- OSTI ID:
- 10134224
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/MC/24207-3532; ON: DE94000057; BR: AA0535000/AA1505000
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Oct 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Chemical conditioning of electrode reservoirs during electrokinetic soil flushing of Pb-contaminated silt loam
Electrokinetic (EK) remediation of a fine sandy loam: The effect of voltage and reservoir conditioning